1. The design and development of the iPhone

The design and development of iPhone is mostly done in the United States, especially in California, where the Apple headquarter is located.

 

The first activity I want to introduce is the design and development of iPhone. Mostly done by the Apple team in the US, the design and development of iPhone is the most important part in the phone’s commodity chain. It requires lots of intelligent engineers and designers to participate in. Here are some of the brightest people in Apple’s engineering and designing team:

Edwards, Jim. “What Steve Jobs got wrong about the iPhone.” Inc. 12 Sep. 2014. Web. 6 April 2015.

http://www.inc.com/business-insider/steve-jobs-completely-wrong-iphones.html

 

Steve Jobs, former leader of the Apple, was the father of the iPhone. He designed and created the iPhone, which marked a new era for the cell phone industry.

Steve Jobs was a perfectionist who placed great emphasis on the product design. For example, one day when he was designing the first generation iPhone, Steve noticed a small detail that made the phone “masculine, task-driven, efficient”. He was awake all night and on the next day, he gathered all the people in the designing team and let them start the work over. In order to make the small changes, the team had to spend a few weeks redesigning the inner configuration of the iPhone. Speaking of the event, one of the former faculty said,”We would have used the previous design if we were in the other companies. But Apple was different: we click on the reset button and start over”. Because of Steve Jobs’ pursuit of perfection, iPhone has become increasingly popular ever since its debut in 2007.

 

“Apple CEO respond to the high price of iPhone 6.” Gadget Popular. 12 Feb. 2015. Web. 6 April 2015.

http://gadgetpopular.com/2015/02/apple-ceo-respond-high-price-iphone-6/

Tim Cook is a business executive who specializes in business management. He has managed Apple’s supply chain for more than ten years. After Jobs’ death, he became the leader of the Apple.

Tim is a master in supply chain. When he came to the Apple, one of the first things he did was to close most of the company’s warehouses around the world, and re-established appropriate contracts with manufactures. “Stock is essentially demeon” he said. He observed that stock would depreciate by 1-2% every week.  Such an action greatly reduces the stock in the company, enabling the company to get out of the big loss from it. Because of his good managment skills, Apple is always able to deliver the iPhone quickly after its announcement.

 

Ritchie, Rene. “Interview with iPhone designer Jonathan Ive.” iMore. 26 May 2008. Web. 6 April 2015.

http://www.imore.com/interview-with-iphone-designer-jonathan-ive

Jonathan Ive is a cheif designer and engineer in the Apple. He designed and develop every generation of the iPhone, which shows his unique skills of innovation.

Whenever the Apple announces a new product, we can see a video that films Jonathan, who introduces its unique design and mechinism.  For example, in the video introducing the iPhone 5C, Jonathan explains his impressive structural architecture design for the new phone. He shows that the making of the iPhone 5C starts with a single piece of polycarbonate, which is then filled with a steel-reinforce frame that makes the phone solid. Later, the phone would go over multiple finishing processes, including a clear lacquer hard coat that gives the phone a durable and glossy surface. All of these creates a solid, dense feel that people would not expect in a plastic product. With Jonathan’s innovative design and engineering, iPhone 5C has become another popular product in the Apple empire.

 

“Think different Apple”. All for desktop, n.d. Web. 11 April 2015.

 http://all4desktop.com/4227873-think-different-apple.html

The design and development of the iPhone has a huge social impact, because they encourage innovation in the cell phone industry. The success of the iPhone by those people tells the cell phone industry how important innovation is. Before the release of iPhone, the cell phone market placed more emphasis on the configuration of the phone than its design. After the success of iPhone, the industry realizes that a good design could result in huge success, and generate a lot of profits. Therefore, the industry began to evolve and paid more attention to the design of the cell phone. One good example would be Sumsang, a famous cell phone company that introduced an innovative cell phone called Sumsang Galaxy Edge in 2015. The phone had an innovative side panel display that allowed people to get more information from two sides of the phone. Most importantly, the design made the phone look a lot more fashionable than its previous models. As a major competitor of iPhone, the Sumsang Galaxy series cell phone had long been criticized by its dull uniformity of the design. The success of iPhone pushed the company to innovate in order to survive in the market. Because the Galaxy Edge had an innovative design that people hadn’t seen of, the phone sold a lot more better than its previous model. Therefore, the success of Apple in design and development gave the cell phone industry an incentive to innovate, which generated positive effect in the market.